Brown Bound

I was overwhelmed by emotions when I got the news of my son’s, Nar’s admission to Brown University for the Fall Semester of 2011. He was ecstatically jumping through the roof (I have photographs to prove it). I was consumed by tears to see a good son’s dream come true, the reward of his hard work and years of unwavering commitment to the “more”. But, most of all, it was for the relief from an arduous and exacerbating journey that has involved my entire family for four years.

What a relief it was!

It is hard to fully and accurately describe the undertaking of immigrant parents to prepare and qualify a son or a daughter for the Ivy League. For all the involvement and planning given, parenthood still tends to be a thankless job these days, except, when a son meets expectations half-way and delivers on his promise, and makes his parents proud.

I have nightmares of the endless hours spent in contemplation, analysis and planning; living in perpetual attentiveness, determination, anticipation, setbacks and renewed hope for months on end. Phew! For the unlimited amount of restrained self-confidence that was essential …always!

The events, projects, and involvements that we as parents had to maneuver, and negotiate were endless: Science fairs, math camps, leadership retreats; I have lost count of the museum visitations, arthouse movies, summer schools, piano recitals, photography competitions, and public speaking opportunities; pSAT, SAT, GPA’s, AP’s, UC’s and a few other tasks with not-so-well known acronyms. Then there’s academic counseling and pep-talks that I had to arrange in order to keep the inspiration and motivation alive. The application process itself was a long list of things-to-do: Essays (sometimes a dozen per college), comprising of the “common essay” (Nar’s was about Woodrow Wilson), multiple short essays (300 words each), and short answers (to a dozen questions). Community service was nothing compared to the send-off of your 17 year-old to a foreign country for a five-week summer internship. No application is complete without letters of recommendation by teachers. Beware of wordy narratives. Finally, before you know it, it's time to pack your bags and hit the road for college visitations- a tour of college campuses up and down the California coast... and the northeast corridor.

In September Nar will be attending Brown University. He will be part of the 248th entering Freshmen Class to walk through the iconic Van Wickle Gates on the first day of school onto the campus along with 1475 others who value a trademark interdisciplinary education- an academic immersion into humanities, the arts and sciences for students who will gather at Brown, literally, from all corners of the world, along with their professors, thinkers, guest lecturers, researchers and purveyors of knowledge and enlightenment.

Over the entire 35-year history of his small Armenian school in Los Angeles, Nar will be only the fourth graduate to attend an Ivy League school. In my case, nothing has been so hard as to come to terms with the contradiction between an ancestral call for an Armenian education for my children and a son’s urge to break away with a passion to grab the opportunity to study at one of the nation’s best institutions of learning. I was in constant (and bizarre) inner-fighting between my loyalty to the school and the administration’s malaise by not “thinking big” with students who live with big dreams, in order to achieve a better college admission profile for the sake of the reputation of … all Armenian schools.

And then Cecilia Donsker turned up with flair…in defense of Nar’s school, our school.

Mrs. Donsker was Nar’s teacher in Kindergarten. “Armenian schools are going through hard times these days with declining enrollment” She explained to Nar, “and I thought of something positive to offer to all those who have doubt.”

As an answer to all parents who ask, “Where do graduates of our school end up going? Or what colleges do they get admitted to?” She thought it would be best to show them, rather than tell them the answer. So she invited Nar to the graduation ceremony of this year’s K class to introduce him to the community. “I figured” she said on that day in her introduction, “ If Brown University is good enough for JFK Junior, then it’s good enough for one of our own” and she called Nar to the stage in front of a thousand gathered, take a bow, wave, that kind of stuff. She was charming with her initiative while she gave Nar a good dose of encouragement, but most importantly she made our school look good.

On that day, Mrs. Donsker assured Nar that she will make a point to visit him at Brown if she was in town: That’s in Providence, Rhode Island, home to 500,000 people, in a campus of 5896 undergrads on top of a hill right in the middle of the city. They call themselves Brunonians (my daughter Lar prefers “Brownies”), and they don’t miss an opportunity to match wits with students from that “other” Ivy League school… a little farther north.

Congratulations Son. All the power to you! We shall be there for you all the way through, and look forward to greet you at the other side of the Van Wickle Gates when, according to tradition, it will open for the second time for you… on your last day of school, to let you out onto the world with other graduates of the class of 2015.

In Deo Speramus (In God We hope).